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Swiss Bread

A batter-soaked bread fried until golden, served with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Swiss Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, whisk together the egg, milk, flour, and salt to make a batter.

Prepare and fry

  1. Cut the bread into slices.

  2. Soak each slice in the batter for about 3 minutes.

  3. In a skillet, melt the butter over medium heat.

  4. Fry the soaked bread slices until both sides are golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with sugar.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg
Binds the batter and helps the slices set and hold together when fried.
Milk
Makes the batter liquid so it soaks into the bread and adds moisture.
Flour
Thickens the batter so it coats the bread and gives structure to the crust.
Butter
Fat for frying that promotes browning and adds richness to the slices.

The step that matters

Soak each slice in the batter for about 3 minutes. Soaking long enough lets the batter penetrate the bread so the centre cooks through, while over-soaking can make slices soggy and fragile.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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